ABSTRACT
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a membership organization. Its approach is unique: all major stakeholders in forestry from environmental, social, and economic interests come together within the organization. Certification in itself is not a new phenomenon, but certification for forest management is. Many standards already exist for assessing the quality of products. The mission of FSC is to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable stewardship of the world’s forests. The FSC certification system is specifically designed to assess forest management; it is based on externally set performance standards specific to forestry and results in a product label. A steadily growing number of FSC-labelled products, ranging from wooden kitchen utensils to doors, are entering the markets of Europe and the USA. The incentives will come from the demands of customers and clients, or from the managers’ perceptions of the advantages to be gained from good resource management and responsible market claims.
